


Ancient History and Me

by obiwankenboneme



Category: The Shannara Chronicles (TV)
Genre: F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:45:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5735479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obiwankenboneme/pseuds/obiwankenboneme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reader is an ancient human who somehow has found herself in the age of elves and mystical beings. Wil is fascinated by the things she knows, growing more infatuated as time goes on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ancient History and Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Wil one, and first Shannara one in general. I’m basing these entirely off the show, as I’ve not read the books.

“Has any of the medicines helped your mother?” you inquire, looking up as Wil takes a seat beside you.

Since you had arrived in this…time…universe…whatever it was, you had been trying your hardest to both understand how it worked, and also hold the semblance of memories you had. You were Y/N from the 21st century. You were not meant to be here, amongst elves and trolls and gnomes. It just didn’t make any sense. These were the stories of children, but here you were, talking with a half-elf about his ailing mother.

Wil sighs and takes a seat beside you on the grassy field, rubbing his face. “Not one. They’re stopping the pain, but they aren’t curing her. I’m going to head out to find another soon enough. I’ve been told it should help with the pain, and possibly cure it.”

“It could be something like cancer,” you state absentmindedly. It’s only when you hear Wil clear his throat that you look at him, seeing the way his brows had furrowed in confusion.

Right, that’s something they’ve never had to deal with. I’m the only ancient human around here who remembers these things.

“Cancer is…was, a disease of my time. It killed many people, and came in loads of variations. All of them were deadly, but depending on what stage you had, it might not kill you. That didn’t mean much of anything though, because no one could find the exact cure, so more people who didn’t have to die, did.” You trail off, staring out at the fields and clouds that were just out of your reach.

A hand brushes your shoulder, and you blink, coming back from the memories and looking at Wil. Inhaling, you shake your head, hair falling in front of your eyes. “But that’s the past. There’s no cancer here. No ailments that I’ve ever known of, aside from perhaps the common cold. This world is much different than mine.”

Chewing on his bottom lip, Wil nods and lays back on the grass. He would never say it out loud, but he enjoyed the stories you told about ancient humans. The day you’d dropped into his life had been one of the weirdest ones to date. You’d shown up at the door of his family home, soaked to the bone in the midst of winter as you explained you had fallen into the lake and…well when you had fallen in it was summer, now it was winter and nothing looked the same. All your friends had been gone, and rather than turn you away, he had let you in.

For weeks you had tried again and again to explain that you weren’t a rover, whatever that was, or anything of that sort. Wil was wary, but he didn’t really have much choice. He couldn’t turn you out now that the weather had grown worse, and his mother seemed to enjoy your company when she was awake enough to handle it. Then you had started telling stories about things he’d only heard of from the older people in the villages. Things that he knew were related to ancient humans. From there on out, he was fascinated to hear anything you could tell him, and while he may not have truly believed you, it was still amazing to hear the tales of centuries before.

“Could you tell me something?” Wil suddenly asks, making you look over your shoulder at him.

His arms were folded behind his head, and his hair had fallen back so you could see his ears, which he always groaned and griped about, saying they were too small to be elf ears and too pointed to be human. The sun was filtering in from above the tree that you two were sitting under, and it played games with the planes of his face, making him seem far more ethereal than he already was.

Swallowing, you turn away so he can’t see your blush. “Sure, what do you want to know?”

“Did you guys have kings and things like that back when you were…well, back then?” he asks, finding it hard to find the right wording on the last part.

It was still odd for the two of you to find a way to phrase it. There wasn’t any way to explain what happened to you outside of a wormhole, which you’d spent plenty of time trying to describe to Wil, who was still confused on the subject. You couldn’t exactly say when you were younger, because you hadn’t exactly aged, so much as traveled in time. Perhaps it was better to say “back then”, because it didn’t need a further explanation.

Laying back so you could look up at the leaves and branches, you inhale and think about the history you’d learned. “Not exactly. When I was…well back when I was there, there were no kings. Scratch that, there were, but they held no real power, depending on where you were. It’s…hard to explain. I guess the best way to put it is that we did have royalty, but they weren’t like the royalty here. They weren’t like the elves. Just normal people, who really didn’t hold that much power unless their government was arranged like that.”

Wil hums something in the back of his throat, and you turn your head to look at him. He’s got his eyes closed, but there’s a thoughtful look on his face, and you snort. “What else is on your mind?”

“What was the earth like then? Where you came from, that is.” Wil’s eyes open, and he turns to look at you. Something seems to pass between the two of you, but you look back up at the bottoms of the leaves, chewing on the inside of your cheek.

“It was…grassy, like this. My family lived in a house much bigger than yours, but that’s ‘cause we had more people, and back then, people lived in…cookie cutter houses, as they were called. Anyway, we lived on a farm, and so there were tons of fields around. Lots of grass. I remember there was…well there was this forest behind our house, just far enough back that my siblings and I would race to see who could get to the forest lining first.” You smile at the thought, seeing the memories behind your eyelids as you close your eyes.

Wil is still watching you, taking in the way you seem more at ease. It was something he rarely saw when he was around you, mainly just because you were so tense, worried for him and everyone else.

“There was a river, a few yards into the forest. We used to go there and swim around, kick up mud and play games. Actually, the day that I showed up here, we’d followed the river down to the lake, and my friends and siblings dared me to jump in. So I did,” you say, brows knitting together as your lips purse.

Now the flashbacks blurred, merging into the murky surface of the lake. “It was bottomless, but they’d dared me to see how far I could go. Dared me to try and find the bottom. I was having trouble breathing, so I swam back up, but when I broke the surface, it was winter, and all of them were gone. I thought…I thought for a while that I’d died.”

Your eyes fly open, and Wil has to take a moment to process what was going on. Suddenly you were sitting up, pulling your knees to your chest and pressing your face into the space between them. You were shaking, and he sits up, rubbing your back and letting you cry.

“You didn’t die though. It just…brought you here. That lake sounds really interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of one like that,” Wil murmurs, making you laugh, wiping at your eyes.

“Honestly, I thought I had died because it didn’t make sense to me either. It sounds insane. Swimming and swimming and then finding a bottomless lake and showing up in a different world. In another…time,” you finish, having turned your head and finding yourself nose to nose with Wil.

He smiles and rubs your back again, looking away, his ears red. Rather than say anything, you rest your head on his shoulder and look out at the fields again. Slipping your hand into Wil’s, you exhale and then squeeze it to reassure him you were there.

“I’ll stay with your mom and try to find some ways to help her while you go find that medicine, okay?”

He nods, moving to wrap his arm around you, pulling your interlocked hands across your chest. There was still a lot to learn from this world, and you were sure Wil would help as much as you could. The least you could do was help him in return.


End file.
